Cooked Pork Shoulder’s and glands

[oil99]

Is a gland recognizable when shredding a pork shoulder?

Reason I ask is I was cutting up a few Costco ones for sausage, and found what I assume was a gland in a fatty chunk. While the appearance wasn’t overly offensive, the smell of what oozed out of it was. Obviously they are easy to see when butchering raw meat but it got me wondering if you’d even notice it if making pulled pork.

 

[one eyed jack]

I've never dissected a raw butt and I've never seen anything like what you describe in a cooked butt.

 

[Jonok]

I have never found one in a Boston butt, (certainly have to be 500+ cooks, and well north of 1000 butts at this point)
If I am doing a whole shoulder, I usually take all of the skin off before I cook it. I’m assuming that I probably get any sebacious glands out from around the picnic when I take off the rind and trim the fat.

Anyway, if it [stinks], (as Cheech and Chong pointed out): ...good thing we don’t step in”
(or eat...)

 

[smokerjim]

butts do have glands, usually taken out by the butcher, sometimes they aren't taken out. they are a grayish color about the size of a nickel, but I must say I haven't seen them ooze, maybe after they're cooked they do but I always make sure they are out before that. are you sure it wasn't a tumor of some kind.

 

[oil99]

Thanks guys, and Jonok like C&C said, good thing we didn’t smoke it ;)

I never noticed anything in a cooked one, and just want to assume you’d never know it was there.

I usually cut my butt’s into ~1” strips for grinding, and I’m guessing half way through this butt I noticed some off colouring near the fat. I think my knife grazed it as when I picked up the uncut chunk it put on the show. I made another cut and isolated it. Sounds exactly like smokerjim described, greyish nickel sized blob, minus it’s smelly release. Does a tumor look similar? I turfed the surrounding meat and washed everything before continuing.

 

[smokerjim]

the tumors i've seen are usually greenish color, which do ooze, i've never seen a gland actually ooze it feels more like a chicken gizzard if that makes sense

 

[Jonok]

Boy, you guys are making me wanna cook chicken or fish...

 

[oil99]

the tumors i've seen are usually greenish color, which do ooze, i've never seen a gland actually ooze it feels more like a chicken gizzard if that makes sense

Ok thanks smokerjim, I think it must have been a tumor. The stuff that came out was greenish and nasty. I love gizzards, this was a NOPE!

And sorry Jonok, I tried to avoid details but it’s hard to explain. And hence my initial apprehension about pulled pork as I wouldn’t have know it was there. I’m gonna chalk this up to out of sight, out of mind, and proceed like it never happened.

Cheers all!

 

[normonster]

Ahhhh man. Da hell'd I open this thread for....